


Joy Cometh in the Morning

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Remix, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 20:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10929078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It couldn't be and yet it was. It was.





	Joy Cometh in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Long Day's Journey Into Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868760) by [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow). 



The light was brilliant, a peculiar lemon hue that seemed to glaze every brick at Mansion House and filled Jed’s sight. He was able to look at the sun without squinting but turned his face away quite soon. It was not as compelling as the moon and there was no warmth to it, nothing that could touch him. The street was silent but the smell of the dust, horseflesh, the musk of unwashed bodies spoke of a journey, lately ended; the stinging fragrance of quinine, blood and sweet putrefaction meant the hospital, the past and the future.

The steps to the entrance had been freshly swept and the mahogany door was polished like a dining room table about to be set for a festive holiday meal. Matron had opened it for him. Her hazel eyes were soft in a way he had rarely seen and he understood why Summers had sung to her, “oh Peggy Gordon!” She was in black for her son and he wondered that every woman in the hospital did not wear mourning for the dying men they nursed as the nuns did. Emma would look even younger, she did so when he saw her walking swiftly across the hall, her cheeks pink, and Mary would have been made more beautiful by the unrelieved dark, her fair face delicate as an Ingres. Would have but could not, since he’d lost her, as he remembered, reminded by his heartbeat, his breath, the ache behind his eyes of tears wept and those that would not fall. Everything was dim around him except the pain of grief, the desperate want that could not be satisfied. It was a knife without ether, without gin or morphine, without surcease or the promise of it, a fang’s strike, a claw’s sudden swipe but the agony was slow like snow falling reluctantly to the bay, a woman’s days’ long labor of a stillborn baby.

The syringe! Oh, the syringe and the morphia, his only hope! Since the morning he’d woken to feel her cool in his arms, her face tranquil as she never had been, her breast full beneath his palm and still, without her heart’s intransigent throb, there had been nothing within him other than her last kiss, the look in her dark eyes that was their marriage, and the promise of the steel piercing him, slipping into his vein with the drug, and then he would find her or forget himself at least. Oblivion, even without her, oh God, without Mary! even that was preferable to what he had now, a terrible, gripping awareness of being alone, abandoned, what Lucifer must have known, though Jed could not imagine what he had done to merit a fallen angel’s fate. What man had he not saved, what rule had he transgressed so violently to deserve this sentence, one that no nun, however devout, could pray him free from?

Matron spoke and he listened but he could not have repeated a word of what she said. Henry walked beside him with his head bent, a human Psalm, but Jed was not comforted as Job had not been. Anne Hastings would not meet his eye and McBurney kept his door locked, the sound of his booted feet pacing, pacing no consolation. Jed could not hear Mary remonstrating with him to be kind, to forgive, _come now, love, consider the whole of it_ because Mary was dead and Jed was bereft. Emma brought him a handkerchief that had been Mary’s but it smelled of Emma’s violet sachet, where she had kept it tucked between her chemise and her stays as a talisman and Mary had preferred lavender and thyme, lemon thyme like the sun’s sharp light when he had walked through the door. There was a blur of surgeries, viscera gleaming and bone dull, broken teeth and mandibles like ivory ready for scrimshaw, but nothing altered what it felt like to have her gone, beyond any reunion. 

He held the idea of his own death in his hand since he woke to find her lost and though he knew she would not approve, he told himself it didn’t matter. It was a thought, not a deed. And then on the journey of soot and steam, the thought had become something more, a promise, a covenant he made with himself. When he walked through the door to the hospital, he heard the needle calling him and it seemed like it was more piercingly sweet than any word she had said, even when she had called him _dearest_ with her hand against his throat. Matron must have seen it in him and Anne, but they wouldn’t believe it. Henry and Emma did not know to look and Jed hid his face from Samuel. He had nearly succeeded, but nearly still meant he’d failed and he opened his eyes again to the tears running down his cheeks, while the staff he had once berated rocked back on their heels, exhausted with what it took to bring him back. He tasted the salt on his lips and knew it had taken the place of her kiss.

“Jed, open your eyes!”

The woman’s voice did not sound like Anne and Emma would not have addressed him so. He felt the touch of fingers above his beard, familiar from dreams. He couldn’t bear to be disappointed.

“Jedediah, wake up,” he heard and this time her voice was gentler, the brush of her thumb across his cheekbone, stroking his temple. “Wake up, love.”

It was impossible but he obeyed and she was there, beside him in the bed, Mary lying on her side, her expression concerned and fond. Her face was pale, too thin, but her eyes were bright and her parted lips were soft. A single, chestnut braid hung over her shoulder, baring the line of her neck. She wore something white, a plain nightdress, without a frill at her throat, but when he reached a hand out towards her, he felt the warmth of her flesh beneath the muslin.

“You were, I couldn’t,” he mumbled but she seemed to understand him.

“A bad dream, I think,” she said and he could not keep the tears from spilling again to know she was alive, restored to him. His hand on her arm tightened.

“It’s all right, I’m not going away. I’m right here,” she added. He spoke before he could stop himself.

“You died. I lost you and it was worse than anything, I couldn’t go on, not without you.”

“It wasn’t real, Jedediah. It was just a bad dream, a nightmare that never was. We are here together, in our own bed, in our own house and Julia and Miriam are asleep in theirs. I’m fine—you saw to that, remember? You threw all the calomel away,” Mary said. As she spoke, he became more aware of the room around them, the vivid watercolor hanging on the wall across from their bed, the portrait of Mary that Lisette had drawn fainter in its sepia wash, the lacy curtains at the long windows, the china pitcher and bowl on a bureau resolving into their regular forms from the exotic scoured fossils his dozy mind had supplied. There was the scent of clean linen and clean woman and the soft huff of her breath against his face. The dream’s reality intruded again and he felt her cold and unmoving in his arms, felt the anguish of being alone and he found himself reaching for her suddenly, jerkily.

“Hush, Jedediah,” she murmured into his ear, clutched in his arms in a way that might be uncomfortable though she did not complain. She shifted and he felt her body soft and curved, pressed against his chest, her bare leg hooked over his. She was his again. She rubbed her cheek against his throat, then spoke again. “Dearest, it’s all right, I’m here, you saved me. Don’t cry anymore.”

“No,” he said, letting the word hang in the air between them, an argument she hadn’t expected. “No, you saved me. You always do,” he insisted, then turned to kiss her slowly, deeply, hardly pausing for breath, not lifting his hands from her skin, tasting her affection, her comfort, the lovely, vital desire she showed so willingly. They would not sleep again this night but he did not want another dream. The room filled with daylight around them, tender even to the shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> "It was only a dream!" Yes, I decided to see whether I could take that trope and make it not a sappy, trite mess; I can only hope I succeeded. I also thought this would be an interesting companion piece to sagiow's "Long Day's Journey Into Night." The title is from Psalms 30:5.


End file.
